For all intents and purposes, the premiere of Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance at this year’s Butt-Numb-A-Thon was supposed to get the geek oriented film in front of those who would almost blindly love it. However, it did anything but that.

But now, in the face of all that, we get a new trailer for the film, which doesn’t look as awful as those reviews would have one think. Watch the trailer here below.

Despite being a sequel to one of the worst films to come out of the recent golden age of comic book films, Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance has a ton going for it. Be it the creative team of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (Crank) being behind the camera, or Nicolas Cage, Cirian Hinds, and Idris Elba being in front of it, this film has all the makings of an impressive step up.

And at this the 2011 New York Comic-Con this weekend, those in attendance at the film’s panel got to see not only on some great, if not all that new, footage, but also a really great panel featuring the two aforementioned filmmakers.

The first trailer for the upcoming Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance has been released. You can check it out here below this article.

The film marks the first time star Nicolas Cage has played the iconic Marvel Comics hero since 2007’s Ghost Rider, Mark Steven Johnson’s much-derided and reviled cinematic adaptation of the character that overcame near-universal derision to become a modest box office hit. This time around Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, the deranged masterminds of the Crank series as well as Gamer (and the screenwriters of last year’s atrocious Jonah Hex movie, but that film underwent so many rewrites and reshoots prior to its release that it’s doubtful much of their original script even made it into the final product), are assuming directing duties. Television writers Scott M. Gimple and Seth Hoffman (House, Flash Forward) make their feature screenwriting debut based on an original story by David S. Goyer (Blade, Batman Begins) that is rumored to have been taken from an unproduced script Goyer wrote for the first Ghost Rider film.

It’s no secret that in the last few years Nicolas Cage’s career has taken a turn for the bizarre and outrageous, with films like Bangkok Dangerous, Bad Lieutenant, and Drive Angry. And likewise, directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor have been pushing the envelope for years with gonzo films like Crank and Gamer. So what sort of batshit insane movie could possibly come from the collaboration of these two unpredictable forces? San Diego Comic-Con audiences got a peek today with a preview of Neveldine/Taylor’s Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, a sequel to the 2007 original.

The panel began with a montage showing off the gonzo shooting style of Neveldine/Taylor as they operated their cameras right alongside the stuntmen, rollerblading along with speeding cars, and hanging off swinging rigs. In fact, they proudly proclaimed they wouldn’t ask the stuntmen to do anything they wouldn’t do themselves, and vow that if any stuntmen are injured during shooting, they promise those takes would be in the film.

Crank, the Red Bull and crystal meth-fueled 2006 action epic, became a minor classic of its time but failed to connect with moviegoers despite the presence of rising celluloid badass Jason Statham in the lead role of unstoppable contract killer Chev Chelios. It wasn’t until the movie hit DVD the next year that it began to find its audience. The sales must have been strong because they were more than enough for Crank‘s distributor Lionsgate to approach the movie’s writer/director team of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor for a sequel. The problem is that the finale of Crank found Chelios dropped from a helicopter over Los Angeles and fought his nemesis to the bitter end. Then he became a street pancake. The end, or so we initially thought. Hey this is Hollywood baby, and in this land of cocaine wishes and Vicodin dreams anything’s possible, even surviving a plummet to the earth from 30,000 feet. And with that in mind, Neveldine/Taylor gives us Crank 2: High Voltage, as boldly over-the-top as a sequel can possibly be.

On our last episode of Crank Chelios was injected with a special Chinese poison by his enemy Verona and in order to keep from kicking the bucket before he could take his revenge Chev had to keep his heart pumping. After a day-long battle that spanned almost all of the City of Angels Chev finally exacted a bloody and satisfying vengeance upon his archnemesis, and then he died. Crank 2 picks up immediately where the original left off with a group of Chinese gangsters scooping the dead Chelios off the asphalt with a snow shovel and spiriting him away to a brothel/makeshift hospital where his powerful heart is surgically removed and placed in the hands of spastic Triad thug Johnny Vang (Art Hsu). In the place of his “strawberry tart” (Chev’s words) the surgeons place an artificial heart that runs on internal and external batteries. They also plot to harvest certain other body parts precious to our hero. Drawing the line at losing his dick Chev wakes up, kills his way out of Triad hands, and contacts his friend Doc Miles (Dwight Yoakam) who explains to our intrepid anti-hero that he must keep the heart running with electricity or else he’ll die.